I Was Expecting More From My X1950 Pro, Is Something Wrong?

[DaveK]

Hey guys, just got my rig built today, took HOURS, and finally have it running. Anyway, I'm using a 512MB Sapphire X1950 Pro, It's quite old now, it's from 2006 and is AGP X8. I'm not expecting to max out Crysis or anything, but FEAR runs quite poor. I'd really like to run the game at 1280x1024 at High or even Medium, I mainly just want my native resolution, but it struggles. Even on 1024x768 and everything on medium it doesn't fair to well, getting less than 30FPS, but playable.

The GPU clock is 581MHz and the Memory clock is 702MHz. If i remember correctly, the X1950 Pro did quite well in reviews when it was out, so I'm guessing it's one of my other components.

My E4300 was overclocked to 2.4GHz but it wouldn't boot properly so I reset it and it's back at 1.8GHz, would it help much to overclock to 2.4GHz? Because I was expecting some decent performance with FEAR, not everything on max at 1920x1200 but something decent.

Am I expecting too much from this card or is something bottlenecking or holding it back?

On the other hand, in my new rig I've noticed playback of 720p videos is really good, my old rig had to load 2-3 seconds when skipping forward or back, now it loads instantly. So my new rig is a good sign there anyway.

 

[sweeper]

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/.../compare,794.html?prod[2139]=on&prod[2140]=on

Don't think it's your system but more the card itself.

 

[spearman914]

Seems about right to me.

 

[sweeper]

yeah it's about right for the card that's in there.

 

[3870x2]

no, i had an x1300 pro and was doing better than he is right now. Before that I had an x200, and was still very playable.
EDIT: hell, looking at your graph it plays COD4 at 1920x1200 very playably

 

[MilkyWay]

oc both your gpu and cpu coz it should be a little better

i think that cpu is holding it back a little so clock it to 2.6ghz


but dont expect miracles you shouldve got a 9600gt

 

[1Kurgan1]

If your talking FEAR the original. I played that with my old x1950 Pro and a 3800+ maxed out and it played great.

So somethings up, I think I was playing at 1280x1024 way back then.

Remember guys he isn't talking about a new game, he is talking about a game that is several years old. So no the videocard shouldn't be bottlenecking on that.

 

[BrooksyX]

oc both your gpu and cpu coz it should be a little better

i think that cpu is holding it back a little so clock it to 2.6ghz


but dont expect miracles you shouldve got a 9600gt

Last time i checked they only made the 9600gt for pci-e, not agp...

 

[3870x2]

... well, Fear is very heavy upon CPU usage. I bet a e8500 with an x1300 would probably get better frames than your setup, just because of the raw cpu power.

 

[MilkyWay]

Last time i checked they only made the 9600gt for pci-e, not agp...

ah sorry even then if he wanted something to be able to handle most games at high medium he could get an ati 3850 agp but seems overkill

 

[ucanmandaa]

Remove all Ati drivers and install them again, I had the same card with my old s939 (2gb ram ddr400, kt800, 4200x2@2.75ghz) system a while back and I was getting really bad performance just like you... a simple reinstall cured all my problems.

It could play cod4 1280x1024 noaa 16af full detail with 30-40fps back then.

 

[kiriakost]

My 3850 does COD5 1600x1200 4XAA

 

[KainXS]

You have a 4coredual remember, all you need to do is flash a gen1 bios to the card

you can buy a pcie or a agp card, or just keep what you have and wait

 

[newtekie1]

There is definitely something up besides the card, it should handle FEAR without issue at 1280x1024. I would try a driver re-install, with a complete cleaning.

Also, I do remember FEAR being rather CPU intensive, so I wouldn't be surprised if the stock E4300 wasn't holding you back some. If a driver re-install doesn't fix the issue, I would try overclocking the E4300 next. You shouldn't have a problem pushing it to 2.4GHz with your board, but you might have to up some voltages. I don't think your board is really a good overclocking board, but it should be able to manage 2.4GHz.

Last time i checked they only made the 9600gt for pci-e, not agp...

His board has both AGP and PCI-E.

 

[DaveK]

His board has both AGP and PCI-E.

Yeah, the ASRock also has PCI-e though i think that's 4x or 8x, but I have an Asus P5QL Pro lying around here, I got it for PCI-e use and that's PCI-e 2.0 x16.

Guess something was up, got FEAR running at 1280x1024, everything is on Low but everything like volumetric lighting and soft shadows is on, runs sweet. I also got Crysis to run on Medium nicely and the CoD4 demo on max though that wasn't that smooth it would probably handle High. So I'm going to play around with some settings and see where I hit the wall.

I should really look into getting the E4300 back up to 2.4GHz and I'll clean the drivers and reinstall them.

 

[r9]

You are going to need at least HD3850 256mb.

 

[Thrackan]

You are going to need at least HD3850 256mb.

Nonsense, I ran FEAR back in the days I still had an x800 Pro.

Not on high, but low settings were playable.

 

[1Kurgan1]

How can you run Crysis on medium and FEAR only on low (with some goodies on), really doesn't seem right. At the time FEAR originally came out your system would have been pretty close to running with the best things out there.

 

[sweeper]

hmmm... strange. I had an x1950XT 512MB AGP and it seemed to run great even with my old P4 system. ODD............

 

[fenurch]

I'm quite certain I played 1st Fear on my Integrated graphics (ATi X200 if I remember correctly) and that really was a piece of shite. But I could still run it pretty decently on 1024x768 and medium.

Something isn't right with your system (not the hardware) but software or sumething.

 

[DaveK]

I tried to overclock using Catalyst but it didn't stay at any overclock...I'm also in the slow process of overclocking my CPU, going in baby steps because anything I've done so far didn't work. Currently sitting at 1.89GHz, a whopping 90MHz overclock

 

[3dsage]

I used to run FEAR with decent settings on a P4D 805 @ 3.0GHZ and a X1800XL no problem at that resolution.
Something isnt properly setup man.

 

[hat]

Well to be honest that motherboard of yours isn't exactly cut out for overclocking. You need to slowly increace your FSB until it doesn't post anymore. Go in 5MHz incraments. When your computer refuses to POST, take the last FSB value that it did POST with and try to boot into windows and run a stability test (something like OCCT or Prime95). It will probably fail on you so don't be alarmed if it does, but run it anyway.

I suspect that you might not be dropping your FSB-DRAM ratio. Try running 3:4, that should give you 150MHz (300MHz DDR) at the stock FSB of 200. You should at least be able to make it to 266FSB which would give you just under 2.4GHz. At 266MHz FSB you'll be able to run a ratio of 1:1 for your FSB and be right where you should be for your rated RAM speed. Remember, when overclocking your processor you only want to stress the processor, stressing your ram just complicates targeting the source of your instability. Keep the FSB-DRAM ratio down and when your system refuses to post, clear the CMOS and come back with more vcore (cpu voltage) until either
A. you are happy
B. you are running too much voltage and temps are too high

Do you have the low profile cooler or the "big" cooler? The big cooler is about as big as the socket 478 pentium 4 coolers. the low profile cooler is fairly small, about an inch tall. If you have the "big" cooler you SHOULD be able to push the voltage a little bit since you do have a case with a billion fans in it. But don't go too far. Watch your temps. You are happy if your processor runs under 60c under load. I wouldn't push any higher than 65c. The technical max for those processors is somewhere around 100c I think, but I would NEVER push any component in my rig to that point. Keep it under 60c if you can, 65c max. A good temp monitoring program is realtemp.

 

[DaveK]

Ugh, no wonder why ATiTool wasn't working for me, it says on the download page "All NVIDIA and ATI cards except for Radeon X1950 Pro are supported in this release." Isn't that convenient...

Anyway, going to install RealTemp and an older version of ATiTool, I'll overclock a bit more and see where I get.

 

[hat]

Don't worry about overclocking your video card right now. Worry only about one component at a time. Once you get your CPU where you want it, you can start worrying about the video card. I think your x1950pro should be fine for FEAR, and yes, even Crysis on medium settings, probably no AA though. I had an 8600gts for a while and that is supposed to be about as powerful as an x1800 so your card should do a little better than mine.